Fort Louis (La Rochelle)

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Fort Louis on a 1628 drawing without Ravelins. (The drawing is reversed north - south)
Fort Louis during the siege of La Rochelle (1627–1628) with Ravelins
Plan of La Rochelle and Fort Louis; the position of the fort is not correct, it was directly on the inlet

Fort Louis was a royal fort built right outside the walls of the city for the purpose of blocking La Rochelle from 1620 to 1622.

history

Since it was King Louis XIII. In 1622, due to the lack of land and naval forces, it was not possible to really besiege the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle, so he commissioned his cousin, Louis de Bourbon-Soissons , to block La Rochelle in order to keep his back clear during his campaign in the Languedoc . For this purpose, he was appointed Général de l'armée d ' Aunis (General of the "Army in Aunis"). The Mestre de camp des Régiment de Champagne , Pierre de La Mothe-Arnaud, called Arnaud du Fort, began with his regiment the construction of a redoubt to block the port entrance, the work of which was monitored by his captains . The plan to build such a fort had already been drawn up in 1620 at the suggestion of de Bourbon-Soissons.

The fort posed a massive threat to the survival of the Huguenots in La Rochelle and was also a constant bone of contention between the city and Louis XIII after the Montpellier Peace Treaty. The city demanded that the king demolish the complex, which he was not prepared to do out of mistrust and kept postponing it. The Régiment de Champagne remained stationed in the Redoute, contrary to the express request of the Council of La Rochelle - even after the Armée d ' Aunis had already been dissolved.

The Maréchal Lesdiguières wrote:

"La Rochelle will have to seize the fort, otherwise it will be her downfall."

Fort Louis then played an important role in the siege of La Rochelle (1627–1628) , exactly what the city had feared from the beginning had happened.

Building

It was a purely functional building with four corner bastions and a wet moat in front of them. The glacis had a covered path with palisades . In contemporary drawings it is shown once with and once without ravelins in front of the curtains . The actual situation is unclear, but the second version should be assumed as a temporary work. It was laid out on the northern bank of the port entrance. The central square had barracks to house the crew.

The fort has completely disappeared today, in its place there is a park south of the Allee du Fort Louis.

See also

literature

  • Jack A. Clarke: Huguenot Warrior The Life and Times of Henri de Rohan, 1579-1638 . Springer 1967, ISBN 978-90-247-0193-3 (17 de International Archives of the History of Ideas).
  • Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper: Europe's Physician The Various Life of Sir Theodore de Mayerne, 1573–1655 . Yale University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-300-11263-7 , books.google.fr
  • Louis Delmas: The Huguenots of La Rochelle . Editeur BiblioBazaar, 2009, books.google.com

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Trevor-Roper 2006 p. 289
  2. ↑ Delmas 2009 p. 136
  3. ↑ Clarke 1967 p. 118

Coordinates: 46 ° 9 ′ 21 ″  N , 1 ° 10 ′ 19.7 ″  W.